Thank you note on Balboa Park parking

Letters to the editor for June 12, 2013

Job well-done on
Balboa Park parking

Three cheers for Mayor Filner, who had the foresight and courage to take action regarding the parking and traffic in our beloved Balboa Park (“Park plaza free of parked cars,” June 11).

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I walk in the park every day and for years have seen cars constantly speeding across the Cabrillo Bridge, using it as a shortcut to downtown and other areas like the airport.

Ultimately closing the bridge to all vehicle traffic in September is something I and many San Diegans have been waiting for. I believe that safer access over the bridge for pedestrians, cyclists. etc. will increase use of the park, not decrease it as foes to the plan claim.

Regarding the parking, taking away the spaces in the central plaza will end up being only a temporary inconvenience, and people will grow accustomed to it in no time.

Thank you Mayor Filner.

Mike Kearney

Hillcrest

Wondering about
where to park now

I’ve been waiting to hear the mayor (or somebody!) address the problem of where the people who usually park in the plaza will go now that parking is no longer allowed.

I have been to Balboa Park many times and have yet to find a parking spot in the lot south of the Organ Pavilion.

The wait time to retrieve my car from valet parking is endless. That is why I support the Jacobs plan — or any plan — that will provide a solution.

Betty Bennett Lowe

San Diego

Federal law is No. 1
with pot dispensaries

It’s been almost 17 years since Prop 215 was passed, but one thing has remained constant: It is still illegal under federal law “(Medical marijuana stores opening illegally,” June 10).

Pass all the local and state laws to the contrary you want; this will continue until the feds change the law. Period.

David Crossley

Online

'Nightstalker’ should
have been executed

Richard Ramirez’s death in prison of natural causes (“Nightstalker dies in prison,” June 8) exemplifies what a pathetic joke the California death penalty has become at the hands of misguided lawyers and politicians.

Ramirez was arrested in 1985, and lived in prison for 28 years, never having been justly executed for his multiple, horrific crimes. By contrast, Gordon Stewart Northcott, the “Chicken Coop Murderer” of Wineville, Calif., was arrested in 1928 for the multiple murders of children, convicted in 1929, and hanged in 1930.

The families of his victims obtained swift and powerful justice.

Our modern liberal society in California has confused moral weakness with mercy. To let murderers off the hook and not pay the ultimate price for their crimes, is to take the cowards’ way out at the expense of the poor victims and their surviving family members whose lives have been destroyed.

The people of California used to have some moral backbone and demonstrated it when Gordon Stewart Northcott walked to the gallows in 1930. I wish that Richard Ramirez had met the same fate.